Meaning & Origins

Transferred use of the surname, which is of disputed origin. There was a given name Selewyn in use in the Middle Ages, which probably represents a survival of an unrecorded Old English name derived from sēle ‘prosperity’ or sele ‘hall’ + wine ‘friend’. Alternatively, the surname may be Norman, derived from Seluein, an Old French form of the Latin name Silvanus (from silva ‘wood’ compare Silas).

English (mainly northern): habitational name from any of various places so called. Several, in particular those in Hampshire, Kent, and Devon, are named from Old English heorot ‘hart’, ‘stag’ + lēah ‘wood’, ‘clearing’. One in Northumberland has as the second element Old English hlāw ‘hill’, and one in Cumbria contains Old English clā ‘claw’, in the sense of a tongue of land between two streams, + probably heard ‘hard’. The surname is widely distributed, but most common in Yorkshire, where it arose from a place near Haworth, West Yorkshire, also named with Old English heorot + lēah. As a Scottish name, it comes from the Cumbrian Hartley (see forebears note).